


You & Me, You & I

by aghamora



Category: How to Get Away with Murder
Genre: F/M, Gentle Sex, Porn with Feelings, Reunion Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-15
Updated: 2017-02-15
Packaged: 2018-09-24 12:52:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9727652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aghamora/pseuds/aghamora
Summary: It’s been so long.Everything is different now. Yet somehow everything is fundamentally the same.Or, Frank and Laurel make love for the first time since the fire.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this sort of as a follow-up to [this](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9629033) little fic I wrote about Laurel’s first ILY, but this can also stand by itself. Reading that gives this a lil more context, though.

His hands shake the first time he touches her again.

It isn’t that he’s scared – even though she’s always terrified him, in a way no one else ever has. It isn’t that he’s unsure about this, about what he wants. It’s that he’s feeling so much at once, so many different things; so much emotion and love and longing that it’s bottling up inside him, pressurizing, like it could make him burst out of his skin, like it’s vibrating through his muscles and tendons and rattling his bones.

It’s that this matters so unbelievably much to him; this moment, and her, and everything. It’s the sheer, petrifying immensity of everything he’s feeling that makes him slip, makes him unable to hide behind that cocky, polished veneer of confidence any longer.

He can’t pretend, anymore. Not with her. Not after he spent so long pretending before.

He used to be a lover with steady, sure hands. Now those same hands are shaking, and Laurel notices. Of course she does; it’s a faint tremor, but it’s very obviously there, and so she reaches down, sewing her fingers in with his in a show of tacit reassurance, stilling them. She’s always been the strong one, between them. So strong and so beautiful and so _sure_.

She’s been through hell, these past few months. It didn’t beat her. Didn’t break her.

She was forged from the flames, instead. She came out on the other side with steel in her spine and iron in her eyes, twice as strong as before and just as unbreakable.

He isn’t sure how they ended up here, kneeling together on her bed; his bleary mind is overloaded, firing rapidly and short-circuiting at the mere sight of her, cheeks flushed and eyes wide, so close, so warm, so overwhelmingly, devastatingly, crushingly _real_. He can remember, vaguely, her coming home after work with a bottle of outrageously expensive wine, substituting it for their dinner. Curling up on the couch with him and resting her head on his shoulder and taking a breath of him into her lungs, holding it there. She hadn’t kissed him, then.

She hasn’t even kissed him yet, but it’s been so long that Frank thinks this is all he needs: being here like this with her, forehead pressed against forehead, Laurel’s tentative hands creeping down his arms, bare chest, exploring him. Reacquainting herself with him, mapping the expanse of his arms, biceps, the chiseled muscles of his abdomen, the swells of his pecs. Re-learning the topography of his body. As if she’d ever forgotten.

No, she has him memorized. He doesn’t know how he knows; just that he does, in his bones, as her palms smooth across his skin, trace all his scars, all his broken pieces.

He knows because he still has her memorized, too.

She keeps leaning forward, now and again, ghosting her lips across his then pulling back at the last moment as if continually second-guessing herself, doubting this, doubting him and herself, and he hates it, hate all this restraint and unfamiliarity between them, but he does the same. Her breath is hot as steam on his cheek, eyes flicking up to meet his, that glittering, jarringly clear blue. He’s overcome by them, by her; by the sheer physical reality of her body and her hands and her _everything_ , outwardly gentle but raging like a hurricane.

He never thought he’d get to touch her again. Never thought she’d want to touch _him_ again. He’s still not entirely sure this isn’t a dream, and if it is he wants to give up living, give up everything to sleep here forever in this world, with her.

“We don’t…” Somehow he wrangles his voice out of his throat, yanks each syllable out one by one to form some semblance of words. “We don’t have to do this, Laurel-”

She almost startles at the sound of his voice, glancing up at him. She presses her lips into a thin, contemplative line, gnawing gently on her lower lip; that lip he wants desperately to take between his own teeth, soothe with his tongue. The wanting is like the drone of a beehive under his skin, all-consuming, the cells and atoms of molecules that comprise him humming one singular chorus of desire. It feels like it could stop his heart. Like it could legitimately fucking kill him.

Her certainty seems to waver, for a moment. But then it snaps back into her eyes, sharp as a blade, and she reaches up, placing a hand on his cheek, his beard bristling beneath her fingertips. He flinches, at her touch, before he can help it. He’s unaccustomed to gentleness, after so many months of only knowing pain and hurt; like an abused dog, wary even of kindness, certain it can only ever be a method of deception, only ever be followed by another blow.

Laurel melts, when he does.

“I want to,” she breathes. She licks her lips, sweat beading on her brow. She’s flushed a delectable cherry red in the summer heat, from the crown of her head to her ankles. He wants to kiss her all over, until she’s redder still. “I want this.”

She can’t. Can’t possibly. For a moment, Frank just looks at her, astonished; from her lightly mussed hair, to her dilated pupils, to her sleeveless chiffon blouse and skirt, the glistening of saliva on her lower lip where her tongue had darted across it. She looks like an angel, like a goddess bestowing her mercy on the most irredeemable, worthless sinner of all. Yet she isn’t looking at him, like that; like a sinner, a monster.

She’s just looking at _him_. Wanting _him_. He’ll never be able to understand how she does.

She’s moving forward before he can get another word out. Slowly, very, very slowly, Laurel presses a kiss to his neck, just below his jawline, then lower to his shoulder, and lower still to his chest, her mouth brushing his nipple ever so slightly. It makes him crumble, her kisses, how perfect and soft and _good_ she is. Her hands follow her mouth, and she touches him with all the tentativeness of a virgin, and yet somehow with no tentativeness at all. She never needed to be tentative with him, before. Even now, after so long, after all these months apart, she seems to know she still doesn’t.

“Laurel…”

His voice is a whisper; it’s all he can muster as she kisses at his chest, explores his body with her dainty hands, even though he wants to tell her so much more: how much he loves her, how much he’s always loved her, how he’ll love her until he dies. He can feel desire stirring low in his gut, and he tries, inexplicably, to fend it off, not feel it. This isn’t about him, his desires. This is about _her_.

She senses that, somehow, and glances up at him, hair falling away from her eyes, lips swollen from kissing him; so stunning it sends a jolt of electricity through him, straight to his brain stem, shocking him awake.

“I want this, okay?” she says softly. “I want _you_. I don’t wanna wait anymore.”

“I…” He gulps, thickly. “You sure? It’s… if you’re not, I-”

She rolls back onto her knees, all at once, fixing him with a look. Her hands are on his cheeks, now, both of them, and he tries not to look at her, tries desperately to lower his eyes away from beauty he doesn’t deserve to see, but she won’t let him.

He’s still trembling, faintly. He doesn’t think he’s going to be able to stop.

“Listen to me. I… I spent so long hurting. I almost died,” she tells him, jaw set firmly, head held high. She sucks in a breath to steady herself, steady the both of them. “Now… I just wanna live.”

He knows she’s right; she _did_ spend so long hurting, after the night of the fire, after losing Wes and then the baby. She’d been angry and bitter for months. She’d spent ages shutting him out every time he even remotely tried to get close, building up a citadel around herself, with walls so thick he’d thought, once, that he could never break through. It’d taken her so long to let him back into her life. To piece back together the broken love they’d had.

It’d taken patience and understanding. It’d been so hard to love her while she was grieving. But it’d also been impossibly simple.

Loving her is like a reflex. Like breathing.

So he nods, silently, and reaches out, unbuttoning her blouse and parting it down the middle before shucking it, leaving her only in her bra and skirt. He does away with the skirt fairly quickly but leaves the bra, not wanting to move too fast, spook her, even though he thinks that if either one of them is likely to be spooked tonight, it’s probably him.

It's only once he’s stripped her that he sees it.

Her scar. The burn. It extends down her side, creeping over her hip, then lower, to her upper thigh, stopping just above her knee. It’s light pink, faded somewhat and hard to see in the dim light, but still standing out starkly, all that scorched, puckered skin contrasting with the smoothness of her flesh everywhere else. He’s never seen it before; at least not the entirety of it. He can’t imagine how much pain it’d caused her.

She bears so many scars from that night, visible and invisible. Scars that would’ve killed anyone else, broken their spirit. Not hers.

She’s so strong. She’s so fucking _strong_ he’s never understood it, and he becomes a million times more aware of it right then.

He doesn’t realize he’s staring until Laurel shifts uncomfortably, her hand moving to her side to cover the scar there as if it’s a reflex, something she’s used to doing by now; a secret shame she has to hide away. A defect.

She swallows and lowers her eyes. “I, uh… I know it looks bad-”

“No,” he murmurs, shaking his head. He moves in closer, his chest tightening when she shrinks back, ever so slightly. “It doesn’t.”

“Yeah, it does,” she says, giving a watery, halfhearted chuckle. She still won’t look at him. “It’s just… it never faded. It’s never gonna heal, all the way.”

Heal all the way. Go back to the way it was before. No, Frank knows, it can never do that. _They_ can never do that, and he doesn’t want to. He doesn’t need her to be perfect; he never has. He wants her, all her pain and scars and imperfections, everything that comes with her. He wants her the same way she’d wanted him; free from judgment, free from expectations and demands.

If she can see every part of him and still love him, he can do the same for her.

“Don’t need to,” Frank says, softly. He moves forward, urging her to lie back against the pillows, and she hesitates, but ultimately complies, her hair fanning out around her head like a dark halo. “They don’t need to. And I don’t care. You’re beautiful.” He kisses his way down her neck, her chest, over her bra, before his lips land on her side, soothing across the burn, the raised, rough, tortured flesh. He traces them like a map, and he figures they are; a map of her pain, her suffering, and he loves that part of her too. “They’re part ‘a you. They’re beautiful too.”

He guides his mouth across the burn, kissing it tenderly, so tenderly he hopes she can feel the sincerity seeping out of him, dripping into her pores, absorbing itself into her skin. He changes course once he reaches her hip, and reroutes to the apex of her thighs, covered by black lace, hidden from view. She’s squirming beneath him now, breath hitching as he draws nearer to his destination. He holds one of her hands as he works, anchoring himself just as much as he’s anchoring her, but when he settles himself between her splayed thighs he goes to release it, let her free and focus his attention elsewhere.

Laurel makes a sound like a panicked whimper, stopping him in seconds.

“No,” she pants, tightening her grip. “Don’t… don’t let go.”

His heart almost splits clean in half, at that, like a dam with too much pressure behind it, cracking open, bleeding love. She sounds so vulnerable, startled. She doesn’t want him to let go. She lost him, once; they _both_ lost each other, and now they’re here, he’s here, and Laurel knows that, logically, knows it on an intellectual level, but she seems to need proof, something to tether her, his hand to grasp so she can assure herself this is real.

He doesn’t deserve her. Not even remotely. He wants to worship her, but he’s never been a religious man, never prayed to any god.

To hell with religion. To hell with it all. He’ll worship her the only way he knows how.

“I won’t,” he rasps, and reaches up with his other hand too, slipping it into hers so that he’s clutching both her hands in both of his, linking the two of them together. “Promise.”

She just wants to hold his hand. So he lets her. He doesn’t let go.

Not even as he zeroes in, mouth hovering over her panties, which are well on their way to soaked through by now, the lace filthy, saturated with her juices, doomed from the start. He teases her over them with his mouth for a while, denying her direct stimulation until she’s squirming, on the brink of begging, and only then does the nudge them aside with his nose and dive in, dropping his jaw so low he can almost, almost envelop her petal-soft folds and her clit with his mouth in one fell swoop.

He doesn’t lap her up furiously, graze his teeth over her clit, trace letters onto her with his tongue, any of the things he’d normally do to bring her off, to nudge her closer to that delicious edge; getting off isn’t the purpose of tonight, and it’s an unspoken understanding but they both understand that, somehow. Instead he just kisses her there, kissing her lips like he would kiss her mouth, feeling her wetness beading there, savoring the thick, saccharine tang of her on his tongue, as delectable as any confection in the world. She’s as sweet as nectar, and there’re enough of her juices that he thinks he could drink her down, lose himself in her. He no longer feels much like a body, like a sentient being with limbs, a cock, a brain; he exists only to please her. Serve and venerate her. He kisses her like he wants to climb inside her, crack open her ribs and close them behind him like a cage, and nestle himself up underneath her heart to be close to her forever.

His mind drifts, and it’s only when he feels her squeezing both his hands insistently, hears her soft voice calling him back to earth, that Frank returns to himself, withdrawing and glancing up at her with hazy eyes.

“Come up here,” she begs, disentangling her fingers from his and reaching down, placing his hands on his damp cheeks, his beard and lips glistening with her wetness as if glistening with morning dew. Her breathing is ragged, breasts rising and falling rapidly. She looks like an erotic painting in the dim light, all gold and orange and deep red tones. “Please.”

So he does. Frank makes his way back up to her, a sheep to his shepherd, and he’s still in his slacks, cock pressing hungrily against the front of them, hissing for his attention like a snake, but at the same time he hardly feels it; he’s so entirely focused on her that his own wanting is but an echo of what it would’ve been, once. This isn’t about him, about dropping his pants and fucking into her until they both scream. He doesn’t want that.

He just wants to show her. Express with his body everything he can never seem to find the words to tell her.

Frank kisses her for a while, letting her taste herself on his tongue, slow, languid; their pace leisurely, no particular end goal in mind, no rushing, just savoring the moment like they’d neglected to do so many times before, before the fire, back when they were together but with so many lies between them they may as well have been miles apart. He’s tucked in at her side, one of her legs wrapped around his waist, her whole body twisted to mold around him, malleable as clay. She’s making all sorts of sounds against his mouth, in the back of her throat, but the one that kills him the most is her long, fluttering, content little hums, like little songs she’s singing into his mouth. He cherishes them. Wants them on repeat, verses and bridge and chorus, all of it, for the rest of his life.

Eventually, Laurel grows weary of waiting, yearning for more, and so she places her hands on his bare chest, rolling him onto his back and straddling him. She reaches into her nightstand, removing a condom and ripping it open, drawing his cock out, smoothing it down over him in a way that makes him shudder. She shucked her panties some time ago; they’ve disappeared, leaving her only in her bra, which she unclasps with her eyes locked on his from above, her lips pressing together almost anxiously, and he knows why: it’s been so long since she was like this with anyone, nude, vulnerable, especially with her burn. Even though he’s seen her this way a million times before, it feels different, like a rediscovery, like their first time all over again.

After so long, she’s unaccustomed to anyone looking at her like this. To anyone _touching_ her like this. No one has, since Wes.

Suddenly she looks doubtful. She stills atop him, tensing, the grin withering on her lips. He wonders if she’s thinking that exact same thing; if she feels disloyal, in a way, to his memory, by doing this. He wouldn’t blame her. He understands. Wes, and her grief and his loss, is something she carries with her always, like a locket around her neck, tucked away in her heart. It’s not something that will ever go away.

He loves that part of her. He’s made room for that ghost, in his life with her. He loves that part of her too, and he doesn’t blame her for hesitating because of it.

“Hey,” he undertones, reaching up, smoothing his hands up and down her hips as she lowers her eyes. When she does he reaches out, taking her hands once more and squeezing them. “We can stop, okay? We don’t have to do this.”

It’s the truth; he _doesn't_ need her to do this. He doesn't need sex. He’s never needed that from her. He's content to simply lie by her side for the rest of his life as long as she'll allow it, so long as he gets to be near her in some capacity.

But that isn’t what she wants. Laurel makes up her mind, then, and he sees it flash behind her eyes. That isn’t what she wants at all.

“I want to,” she affirms, her hands pressing against his chest, fingernails catching his stomach and making him jump. “I do, I just… not like this.”

He doesn’t know why; she used to love riding him. Maybe it’s something about being watched, him seeing her burn. Maybe it’s something else entirely, a lack of confidence, but Frank nods understandingly even though he _doesn’t_ understand, not at all, and places his hands on her hips again, rolling her off of him, doing away with his pants, coaxing her onto her back and lowering himself atop her, pressing her supple body against his. It’s a slow, gentle transition, not fast enough to shock her, but she seems pleased once they’re settled there together, and she locks her ankles at the small of his back, trapping him there, coiling around him.

Dragging him down to his sweet, sweet doom.

“This better?” he purrs, leaning down, sucking at her neck, lips teasing at her earlobe. Immediately, like ice thawing to water, he feels the tension flood out of her, feels her muscles go loose and pliant beneath him, feels her open up to him all at once.

“Yeah,” she replies, voice thin, reedy. She looks so beautiful, with her half-lidded eyes, the curve of her lips, the pull of her breath that draws him forward and back, in and out, like a tide. She looks shy, again, almost timorous, “but… will you hold my hands?”

Hold her hands. She just wants him to hold her hands. It shouldn’t make Frank want to weep but it does, because he loves her so much, loves her in a way that consumes him wholly, eats him alive in a sweetly agonizing way. Because it’s slowly killing him; _she’s_ slowly killing him just by being here, just by asking him, so innocently, so chastely, to hold her hand.

He can’t tell her no. He’ll never be able to tell her _no_ ever again in his entire goddamn life.

He obliges, curling his fingers through hers and letting her hands rest on either side of her shoulders. It looks almost as though he’s holding her down, but he’s not; if anything she’s holding _him_ down, holding him in place, like a planet keeping its moon close by with the pull of its gravity.

She’s devastating; a force of nature unlike any other. She’s everything.

She just _is_.

“This good?” he asks, again, so cautious. So careful. “You good?”

She’s breathless. Breathless and blushing and beautiful. “Yeah.”

He doesn’t go fast; he goes even a measure slower than _slow_ as he presses inside her, sliding home, biting back the groan that threatens to slip past his lips. She’s so warm and wet and tight and perfect, closing in around him like velvet, the sensation dulled by the condom but far from erased entirely. Laurel tenses beneath him as he enters her, her cunt stretching to take him, every inch, drawing him in further and further until he’s buried as deep as he can go, until he swears he can feel her heartbeat on the head of his cock. Her eyes slip closed, head lolling to one side; instinctively, in the midst of her pleasure, she turns away from him to hide her face, and a sudden, almost obsessive need to see her open her eyes grips him.

He wants to watch her. _Needs_ to.

“Look at me,” he coaxes, and it takes her a moment but finally Laurel complies, panting. He feels, suddenly, so heavy atop her, like he must be crushing her, but Laurel seems to welcome the weight of him, the way he’s draped over her, his body almost swallowing her up. “Look at me.”

“Frank…”

“Keep lookin’ at me,” Frank urges, lowly, as he moves his hips forward lazily again, thrusting in and pulling nearly all the way out. Her grip on his hands tightens, and she cries out again, but she does as he says; she doesn’t look away. She seems to want to watch him, too, like he’ll disappear the moment she closes her eyes, like this is all a dream from which she’s terrified of waking.

He presses his forehead against hers, once more. Steadies himself atop her. And like that, he begins.

He doesn’t go fast, when he starts to fuck her in earnest. He goes so torturously slow, petrified of hurting her somehow, of scaring her, overwhelming her even though she’s given him every indication she wants this as much as he does. _Fucking her_ doesn’t seem right; this isn’t fucking, no grunting and groaning and filthy words and roughness. They don’t need to hide behind any of that, now.

He wants to make love to her. He wants to show her how much he loves her, devote every inch of his body to her, his soul, his unworthy flesh. He’s never made love to her like this; tried to pour the very essence of himself into every kiss, every thrust, like he’s trying to fill her with him, fill _himself_ with _her_. He wants to give her everything, give her the world, give her enough pleasure to surmount all the terrible pain she’s endured in her life. He doesn’t know if he can ever properly demonstrate to her how much he adores her, even like this.

But dammit if he isn’t going to try.

It feels surreal, having her like this, staring into her eyes, locking Laurel in as the focal point of his world, of his entire universe. The planets and stars and distant galaxies all orbit around them, now; all orbit around this single moment, this room, this bed. They must. This feels like the beginning and the end of everything in the world. In _his_ world.

He can hear her cries crescendoing, lilting _ohs_ and _ahs_. He watches her mouth form them. Some he kisses off her tongue, stealing for himself, holding them captive in his lungs. She’s doing her best to keep looking at him, not break their stare, but her eyelids are slipping closed now and then, her head rocking from side to side. Still, he stays, forehead pressed against hers, eyes trained on her, never deviating. Never looking away.

“Frank… _Frank_ -”

He can feel himself building, too, but somehow it feels less like something he truly wants than it is the innate reaction of his body to hers. It's strange, how little he cares about coming at all; he doesn't think he even needs to, tonight. He just needs to be inside her, feel their bodies connected, joined as one, as close as he can get to her. Closer than close. That’s satisfaction enough.

That’s so much _more_ than enough.

But then something in the air shifts, and he glances down at her, and she’s so close to coming that she’s almost convulsing, body trembling, cries ringing out in his ear, but she’s not letting herself. She doesn’t seem to want to allow herself to let go, give in to that impulse, the desires of her body. Not after she hasn’t let her guard down like that in so long, been with anyone in this way. She’s ashamed to do it. Maybe she feels like she shouldn’t, after everything, after so long. Maybe it feels unfamiliar to her body. Overwhelming.

She’s not letting herself come. She’s _fighting_ it.

“Hey,” he soothes, releasing her hands, placing a hand on her cheek and urging her to meet his eyes. There are tears in hers, when she does, mingling with the sweat on her face. She’s gritting her teeth. It breaks him, the pained sight of her, the uncertainty, the battle raging behind her eyes. Makes the floor drop out from underneath him like a trap door. “Hey, it’s okay. You can let go.”

“I-” she chokes out, but doesn’t seem equipped to finish that thought. “I…”

“You can let go. I’m here. I got you,” he assures her, and he’s back to cooing the words, soothing her, consoling her as best he can. It’s not him; not anything he did or _is_ doing wrong. It’s been so long, so long for Laurel, and after all that hurt and suffering it’s no wonder she doesn’t want anyone to see her like this, let anyone make her crumble. “You can let go with me.”

“Frank-

“I got you. Lemme hold your hands,” he murmurs, and does just that, slides his hands back into hers and holds on fast, letting her grip tighten around him in tandem with her cunt. He kisses her cheek, her sweaty forehead, the pace of his thrusts steady and sure. He’d been so unsure, before. Now he knows he can be sure enough for the both of them. “Lemme make you come.”

It takes her a moment more. But then, finally, she does.

She lets him, and he holds her through it, kisses her, nuzzles the hollow of her throat and whispers reassuring words to her as she splinters apart, a jolt passing through her from head to toe. She shakes down to her bones, tearing her hands from his and wrapping them around the back of his neck and holding on tight as her hips buck, as she goes to pieces beneath him and he picks them up one by one, puts her back together. He doesn’t fuck her through it, try to prolong her orgasm in any way; he goes still and lets the waves ebb and flow as they please, lets them wash over her and pull her under, and he’s seen her come harder, _made_ her come harder, but this destroys her in a way nothing ever has before, until she makes a sound like a sob and manages to open her eyes, refocus them blearily on his.

She’s sweaty and spent. She’d fought the pleasure so hard, warred with her body, because she’s been fighting so long and so hard that maybe she’s forgotten how to do anything else, forgotten how to give herself over to forces beyond her control.

Forgotten how to trust anyone to take care of her.

His mind leaves him, for a moment, but once Laurel shifts beneath him he becomes very much aware of the fact that he’s still nestled inside her, still hard, throbbing, the pressure inside him aching for release even more now after watching her. He doesn’t need it, though. Doesn’t need to come inside her. Doesn’t need to come at all.

“You want me to stop?” he manages to choke out, feeling like a madman, and he is. He’s been one for a long time, maybe since the day he met her. “Stop here?”

Confusion flickers in her eyes, for a moment.

Then, with abrupt, fierce determination, Laurel shakes her head.

“No,” she declares, shaking her head, seeming almost afraid of him pulling out, leaving her just yet. She tightens her legs around him. “I want you inside me.”

He swallows. His throat feels packed full of brambles, scratchy, aching, but he resumes his movements, slow, tentative, when every impulse in his body is screaming at him to go faster, but he won’t. Once, maybe, he would’ve. But he was a different man, once, and she was different too.

Everything is different now. Yet deep down everything is fundamentally the same.

It’s only a minute before the pleasure comes crashing down on him in a chaotic, devastating clatter, before the lights blind him and he damn near goes cross-eyed, spilling into the condom with a half-growl. Laurel does what he’d done for her; she reaches up, runs her fingers through his hair, murmurs words of encouragement in his ear, sweet nothings that mean everything. She’s warm and real and gentle, more gentle with him than he deserves. She holds him until he comes down, and when he does she cups his cheeks, kissing him deeply, saying more with that kiss than she ever could with any words.

They don’t need words. They speak to each other with their eyes, through the silence, in a language only the two of them can understand. Like code talkers on a wavelength entirely their own.

Maybe they don’t need words. But sometimes words are nice.

“I’m okay,” she assures him before he can ask, after he ties the condom off and casts it into the waste bin, settling back down beside her. “I know… I know I-”

“You don’t have to explain,” he tells her earnestly, because she doesn’t, even if he doesn’t entirely understand everything that happened tonight, even if he’s still reacquainting himself with her new array of quirks and ticks and mannerisms. Some things are for her to hold close to her chest, keep to herself. He knows that.

She doesn’t ever have to explain herself to him. They’re past the point of needing that.

A moment of silence sweeps over them, and Laurel ends it by inching closer, her body sliding across the sheets and meeting his. She rests her head on his pillow, just beside his shoulder so that her silky hair brushes his skin, and he curls his arm around her so naturally, so easily, without even thinking. It’s an impulse, like muscle memory whenever she gets near, to hold her. Touch her. Feel that she’s real, and know that she’s with him.

And she is. She is with him. But he can feel her drifting now, like a ship slipping its moorings.

Her eyes fade out of focus, take on that empty, hollow stare, as though she’s lost in a memory, in another time and place. Sometimes she drifts like this, without warning, and he doesn’t always know how to bring her back, and that’s okay. And sometimes she’s not.

Sometimes she’s _not_ okay. Sometimes she has bad days where she slips back into that grey fog, haunted by the memories of the night that’d scarred her, the night that had taken so much from her and burned her as hollow as that shell of a house. He knows when she’s there, in that place; he knows when to leave her be, when to try to tug her back down to reality, to him. It doesn’t offend him, when she leaves him like this. Doesn’t make him feel any less important.

He loves her enough to know that it’s a part of her, now. She’s not who she was. He isn’t, either. But they’re adapting, slowly. Finding their footing on this new ground together. He doesn’t need how things were. He loves how they _are_.

Really, more than anything, he just loves _her_.

Now he’s the one drifting, and Laurel brings him back by reaching up, taking his hand, holding it once more. She plays with it absentmindedly, with his thick, rough fingers, his creased palm, with a sort of youthful fascination, before she closes her hand into his fist and lets it rest there on his chest.

“You were shaking, before,” she remarks, still somewhat distant but slowly descending back to earth, touching down. “Your hands.”

It’s true; he was. He’d never really stopped. Frank gulps, his throat tightening. “Yeah.”

“Why?

“Just… I missed you. So much,” he confesses, as she tucks her forehead under his chin, presses herself as close as she can get. “Not just this. Everything.” He pauses. “Didn’t feel real. Still doesn’t.”

“It is,” she tells him. “It’s real. And I love you.”

She says it softly, sweetly, the words meeting his ears as gently as a butterfly alighting on a petal. It’s not the first time she’s said it, though it doesn’t feel any less surreal than it had that first time, after he’d become so certain she’d never say it at all. Certain that she didn’t love him. That no one ever could. He never tires of hearing the words, and she’s telling him this is real, sure, but it doesn’t feel like it.

He’d been the sure one, before. But now he’s seesawed back down to not being sure at all.

They have so many insecurities, now; both of them. This is his. The burn is hers. They’ve both been broken down from the people they were before, mangled beyond recognition. He’d spent months feeling worthless. She’d spent months bitter and angry. They’ve pieced themselves back together now to some semblance of stability that really isn’t stable at all, that is just about as stable as a building with toothpicks for its foundation, and his confidence falters, when she speaks those words – even though he’s happier than he can ever say to hear them.

He’s not certain about a lot of things. He’s still not certain he believes them. In truth he’s not sure he’ll ever be able to.

Laurel must sense that, because she props herself up, looking at him pointedly. “Frank?”

“Yeah, I just…” He drifts off, struggling to steady his voice. “Sometimes I don’t believe it. Don’t get why.”

He’s not saying it to bait her, to get her to tell him again, inflate his ego. He genuinely doesn’t, and Laurel seems to recognize that because she places her lips on his collarbone in a soothing, tender kiss, then lets her face rest there for a moment, her nose brushing against him.

“What do I have to do, then?” she asks, quietly. “To make you believe me?”

Somehow, he wrangles a smirk onto his lips, quirks an eyebrow. “Well for starters… you could hold my hand.”

Like she’d asked him to do. The realization glimmers in her eyes, makes them glow. There’s something overtly innocent about it, holding hands; something chaste and simple and schoolyard-esque. They were always so far from that, so far from innocent or simple. They gave up _simple_ the day they started moonlighting as grave diggers

They’ve had a lot of bad. Maybe they’re owed some good, now.

She smiles, one of her slow smiles that blossoms on her lips like a flower opening up beneath the sun, just barely exposing the pearls of her teeth. He hasn’t seen her smile like this in ages, carefree and genuine; since the fire her smiles have mostly been sad, pained, forced, sometimes all three. There’ve been very few genuine ones. Very few ones at all. She’s genuinely happy so infrequently now it kills him.

They can be happy, one day. They can get better.

They’ve come so far already.

“Okay,” she hums, lightly, the sound like a melody as she slips her fingers through his with renewed vigor. She presses a kiss to the back of his hand, then rests it between them once more. “I can do that.”

She’s so good. Boundlessly merciful, even after she’s been put through all nine circles of hell, even though after all she’s been through she has no reason to be. She’s so gentle with him, so soft and understanding. Beautiful in every fathomable way a person can _be_ beautiful. She’s light-years beyond anything he will ever deserve and he’s so lucky, so incomprehensibly, immeasurably _lucky_ that she’s here with him now, after everything.

She keeps her promise. She does as she says. She holds his hand, and he holds hers back.

Neither one of them lets go.


End file.
